Anatolia, Ottoman eyalet of

Seljuk Rum survives in the late thirteenth century as a vassal state of the Mongols, who had already subjugated the Great Seljuk sultanate at Baghdad.

Mongol influence in the region disappears by the 1330s, leaving behind ghazi emirates competing for supremacy.

From the chaotic conditions that prevail  throughout the Middle East, however, a new power emerges in Anatolia—the Ottoman Turks.

Documentation of the early history of the Ottomans is scarce.

According to semilegendary accounts, Ertugrul, khan of the Kayi tribe of the Oguz Turks, took service with the sultan of Rum at the head of a ghazi force numbering "four hundred tents."

He had been granted territory—if he could seize and hold it—in Bithynia, facing the imperial strongholds at Bursa, Nicomedia (Izmit), and Nicaea.

Leadership subsequently passes to Ertugrul's son, Osman I (r. ca. 1284-1324), founder of the Osmanli Dynasty—better known in the West as the Ottomans.

This dynasty is to endure for six centuries through the reigns of thirty-six sultans.
Osman's small emirate attracts ghazis from other emirates, who require plunder from new conquests to maintain their way of life.

Such growth gives the Ottoman state a military stature that is out of proportion to its size.

Acquiring the title of sultan, Osman I organizes a politically centralized administration that subordinates the activities of the ghazis to its needs and facilitates rapid territorial expansion.

Bursa falls in the final year of his reign.

Osman's successor, Orhan (r. 1324-60), crosses the Dardanelles in force and establishes a permanent European base at Gallipoli in 1354.

Murad I (r. 1360-89) annexes most of Thrace (called Rumelia, or "Roman land," by the Turks), encircling Constantinople, and moves the seat of Ottoman government to Adrianople (Edirne) in Europe.

The Ottoman ghazis defeat the Serbs in 1389 at the Battle of Kosovo, although at the cost of Murad's life.

The expanding Ottoman Empire had overpowered the Balkan Peninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Present-day European Turkey and the Balkans, among the first territories conquered, are used as bases for expansion far to the West during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The Ottoman Turks have by 1517 conquered Persia, Syria, Palestine, the Hejaz and Egypt itself, in the process destroying the Mamluks, who have failed to adopt field artillery as a weapon in any but siege warfare.

The Ottoman Empire is a world power when Suleyman dies in 1566.

Most of the great cities of Islam—Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Damascus, Cairo, Tunis, and Baghdad— are under the sultan's crescent flag.

The Porte exercises direct control over Anatolia, the sub-Danubian Balkan provinces, Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia.

Egypt, Mecca, and the North African provinces are governed under special regulations, as are satellite domains in Arabia and the Caucasus, and among the Crimean Tartars.

In addition, the native rulers of Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, and Ragusa (Dubrovnik) are vassals of the sultan.

The Egyptian army now marches north into Anatolia.

At the Battle of Konya (December 21, 1832), Ibrahim Pasha soundly defeats the Ottoman army led by Koca Mustafa Reshid Pasha.

There are now no military obstacles between Ibrahim's forces and Constantinople itself.

Muhammad Ali's goal is now the removal of the current Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II and replacing him with his son, the infant Abdülmecid.

While Britain and France are sympathetic to Muhammad Ali, Nicholas I sends a Russian army to the assistance of the Turks.

Sultan Mahmud II is so alarmed by the possibility of deposition that he accepts Russia's offer of military aid, much to the dismay of the British and French governments.

From this position, Russia brokers a negotiated solution in 1833 known as the Convention of Kütahya.

The terms of the peace are that Ali will withdraw his forces from Anatolia and receive the territories of Crete (at this time known as Candia) and the Hejaz as compensation, and Ibrahim Pasha is to be appointed Wali of Syria.

As the result of near-endless discussions between the representatives of the powers, the Porte and the pasha, the Convention of Kütahya is signed on May 14, 1833, by which the sultan agrees to bestow on Muhammad Ali the pashaliks of Syria, Damascus, Aleppo, and Itcheli, together with the district of Adana.

The announcement of the pasha's appointment had already been made in the usual way in the annual firman issued on May 3.

Adana is bestowed on Ibrahim under the style of muhassil, or collector of the crown revenues, a few days later.

 

Muhammad 'Ali and his son Ibrahim have given Syria-Palestine a centralizing and modernizing administration.

Their rule has increasingly opened the country to Western influences and has enabled Christian missionaries to establish many schools; at the same time, however, taxes have increased, and urban rebellions break out against the harshness of the regime.

Muhammad 'Ali, dissatisfied with partial sovereignty over Syria, goes to war again against the Sultan's forces in 1839.

Mahmud II on May 23 had ordered his forces to advance on the Syrian frontier, but Ibrahim attacks on June 24 and destroys them at the Battle of Nezib, near Urfa.

Echoing the Battle of Konya, Constantinople is again left vulnerable to Ali's forces.

Ali and Ibrahim begin to argue about which course to follow; Ibrahim favors conquering the Ottoman capital and demanding the imperial seat while Ali is inclined simply to demand numerous concessions of territory and political autonomy for himself and his family.

Ottoman sultan Mahmud II dies almost immediately after the battle of Nezib and is succeeded by sixteen-year-old Abdülmecid on July 1, 1839.